PANTOGRAPHIA; CONTAINING ACCURATE COPIES OF ALL THE KNOWN ALPHABETS IN THE WORLD; TOGETHER WITH AN ENGLISH EXPLANATION OF THE PECULIAR FORCE OR POWER OF EACH LETTER.
- London: John and Arthur Arch, 1799.
- 8vo.
- early twentieth-century half leather with cloth-covered boards, five raised bands, all edges uncut
- 12 page prospectus, (iv), xxxvi, 320 pages
Price: $1,750.00 other currencies
Order Nr. 64283
First edition, finely printed letterpress in types cast by Fry, Steele, and Co. on hotpressed Super-Royal Wove Paper with Cooper and Graham's "best" ink (Bigmore & Wyman I,243; Bonacini 647, Lowndes 844, Updike II,120 and Birrell and Garnett 93).
Untrimmed copy with wide margins. Very unusual to find with a copy of the original prospectus that was issued in August, 1798 bound into the volume. Minor wear to binding, prospectus cover repaired. The very scarce 'Publisher Note' is not included in this copy.
Arranged in alphabetical order, the scholarly Fry provided a textual description of each alphabet on the right-handed pages with a specimen of the full range of the alphabet on the left. Fry, one of the most learned of the English typefounders of his day, spent sixteen years researching this great work. Contains more than two hundred specimens of alphabets from Abyssinian to New Zealand, including twenty varieties of Chaldean, thirty-nine of the Greek, as well as eight Egyptian, eleven Hebrew, seven Irish, six Malayan, seven Persian, seven Phenician, seven Samaritan, one Thibetan, and two Welsh. Requiring an extraordinarily large range of type specimens, many of the characters were expressly cut by Fry for his book, although some did come from the James' Foundry.
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